The Foundation: Two Decades of Experience in Chamber Music
Villa Musica is a state foundation of the German Bundesland Rhineland-Palatinate (Rheinland-Pfalz), founded in 1986 in order to provide special education for highly gifted young musicians from all over Europe in the field of chamber music. The foundation is also one of Germany’s biggest classical concert institutions organizing some 150 chamber music concerts all over the country.
Most of these concerts are connected to the master classes, in which professors join students for rehearsals and concert performances. The rearsals take place in Villa Musica’s lovely “Academy for Chamber Music” in Schloss Engers (Neuwied), a late baroque palace on the riverside of the Rhine. The mutual relationship between the older, experienced performers and the talented young musicians in connection with the wonderful working conditions in Schloss Engers provide for a unique chamber music experience hardly to be made anywhere else in Germany. Highest demands on young performers turn into fresh and extremely professional performances. Villa Musica concerts can be heard in more than 50 places in Rhineland-Palatinate, and also in Berlin, Paris, Moscow, Brussels, and other big cities.
In developping the idea of a chamber music teamwork between professors and students, Villa Musica has been able to rely on the experience of some of Europe’s best performers, e. g. violinists Rainer Kussmaul, Nicolas Chumachenco, and Thomas Brandis, Cellist Martin Ostertag, clarinetist Ulf Rodenhäuser, bassoonist Klaus Thunemann and others.
Villa Musica has also invited young musicians and professors from other countries, like France, China, Russia, the Baltic States, the USA, and Bulgaria. German as well as foreign students are invited to the master classes without any costs for participation, travelling or living. Additionally, each young performer takles part in the competition for the yearly “Villa Musica Young Performer’s Price”.
Besides these activities, Villa Musica is also one of Germany’s most renowned concert organizors, regularly inviting chamber music groups from all over the world to Rhineland-Palatinate. Its spring and summer festival Musik in Burgen und Schlössern (Music in Castles and Palaces) ows its charm to the famous castles in the Rhine valley as well as to the lovely vineyards of the Palatinate. The foundation is regularly cooperating with the Southwest Broadcasting Station of Germany (SWR). It is led by a board of music experts closely collaborating with the government of Rhineland-Palatinate.
Please contact us for further information: info@villamusica.de – www.villamusica.de